It's Different
by AppleCiderVinegar
Summary: Xaldin reflects on his assignment and his own position.


Perhaps the reason why Xaldin studied the Beast and his household so carefully, so scrupulously, was not only for the sake of his mission. The Beast's anger and rage was fascinating, for the sake of getting to his heart, but that gave Xaldin no reason to return, time and again, to study the Beast and his servants from the shadows. Watching them became an obsession, and deep down he knew the reason why: in their strife and suffering, he saw himself, his own situation, reflected back at him.

The Prince was turned into a beast by his own selfishness, by one fatal error that doomed him and his household to an eternity under enchantment. Exactly as Xehanort had with the rest of Ansem's apprentices, leading them astray, leading them to betray their master and meddle in things which they had no business interfering with, leading them to a fate worse than death by mere virtue of the fact that none of them _understood_ – But that was where the apprentices differed from Beast's servants. The servants had done nothing: they were blameless and yet punished for their master's crime, while the apprentices had been thoroughly invested in their downfall, and they were sullied, heartless, _Nobodies_, because of it. But the servants' blamelessness made their plight pitiable and their hearts pure.

And Xaldin hated the servants for that, inasmuch as he could hate, Nobody that he was.

The household all still harbored the hope that they would be human again. They still followed their master blindly, devotedly, no matter what, because if they didn't where would they go? It was pathetic, weak. It sickened him. If the Beast said "Jump for me," then that simpering little clock, or the candlestick, or any of them would undoubtedly say "How high, Master?"

And if Xemnas said "Die for me," then the same former apprentices who had done the experiments with him, who _knew what would happen_ if they just pandered to his whims, would undoubtedly say "Where, Superior?" Because if they didn't have Xemnas, if they didn't have a Superior to look to, to show them Kingdom Hearts and tell them it would soon be theirs, then where would they go?

After Oblivion fell and their ranks were cut nearly in two, no one spoke of the character of those who had never come back. No one said a good word about them, and in a few days no one even cared enough to remember them. It was as if they had never been. Not even the Nobodies who had lived and breathed with Even and Aeleus and Ienzo could have cared less that their comrades had fallen.

Which, really, was as it should have been, since Nobodies had no right to exist in the first place. But three of the founding members were dead, had died – according to the report – in a misguided attempt to foil the takeover plot being undertaken by the Neophytes, and there was no words even said to honor their memory.

That was a lie. There were, but it essentially amounted to "Good riddance." And while Xaldin had never been particularly close with their three fallen brethren (and trusted Marluxia and Larxene about as far as he could throw them), he didn't approve of speaking ill of the dead. He was allowed to have opinions still, even if he lacked the ability to feel conviction enough to back them.

But when he was told that his mission was put on hold, as things at Never Was started going to hell, Xaldin couldn't help but think about the castle. If one of the servants was broken, hurt, or shattered, would the others carry on without him? Would they not grieve, as much as a candlestick can cry, or a teapot, or a clock? They would have lost a friend, a companion, one of their ranks who wanted only the same thing they all did. Would the Beast rage, if one of his servants was broken because of a task he had ordered them to carry out, or would he feel guilt, pity, grief? Xemnas hadn't spared a thought for the men who had damned themselves for him as apprentices, and died for him as Nobodies. Would the Beast be so ensconced in his own misery that he would be the same, or would he think about the man, woman, or child that object once had been, grieve for them even, knowing that if their curse was broken there would be one less among them?

When Xaldin went back to the Beast's Castle, his first order of business was to convince the Beast to lock his servants away. He told himself that it was because they could get in the way of his plan: they were close enough to their master, they could speak sense to him and slow, hinder (but not stop) the Beast's descent. But he really just couldn't bear to look at them, to see them blindly hoping and blindly following their master, trying to help him, when Vexen, Lexaeus, and Zexion had done exactly that and died for it.

He also drove Belle away, told the Beast that she was plotting against him every bit as much as the servants, whispered honeyed poison in his ear until he believed every word and spent every day in despair, forlornly watching the rose's petals fall. It was only fair, Xaldin told himself. If the Nobodies couldn't have Kingdom Hearts, if they couldn't get their hearts back, become whole – _human – _again, then why should the Beast and his household get their freedom, their original forms, back when none of them had died for it? Perhaps it was petty. Perhaps it was unfair.

But life was unfair, and sometimes, hope deserved to be crushed like a pitiful insect. They needed to be shown that hope was weak, that the Beast was weak, and that placid inaction, hoping, fretting, was not the way to restore all that they had lost. They all wanted to be human again, the servants and Organization both, in their own way. The difference was, the Nobodies were willing to give up their humanity to win it.

The servants were just disgustingly weak, pitiful, helpless. But the reflection of himself that Xaldin saw in their mirrored situation disgusted him even more. The servants to the Beast were objects, knick-knacks, useless bric-a-brac that defied logic by even being able to move. The servants to the Superior were Nobodies, shells, empty husks that defied logic by existing.

And Xaldin hated them, inasmuch as he could hate.


End file.
